One extremely important feature that needs serious rethinking is the way the input rectangle is selected.

In the Fixed Region setting I am allowed to press select and draw a rectangle. If I have the "Fixed Top-Left Corner" box checked the drawn rectangle left top will not be filled in in the appropriate fileds. So only the size of the selected window will be set (I think).

If the "Fixed Top-Left Corner" is UNchecked the top left corner is filled in. But then I am not allowed to adjust the numbers. This is just needlessly complicated. I would say remove the "Fixed Top-Left Corner" entirely. It is useless.

Using the "Region" option in "Region" is impossible. First having to start the recording and only then selecting the window is just silly. And beyond that: it leads to serious output faults.

The resulting video is void the first few seconds and only starts showing the moment I selected the rectangle. The more desired behaviour of the option is covered by the "select" button in the "Fixed Region" window.

Therefore just removing the "Region" option will improve the program considerably.

The dotted line of the drawn input rectangle should be exactly 1 pixel wide. Either that or it should be made clear what the exact boundary of the selected input is.

Does actual selected input contain the drawn rectangle and is the edge of the recording area the outer edge of the rectangle? Or does the rectangle enclose the recording area and is the entire rectangle outside it? That should be clear and consequent on all sides of the recording area.

I would opt for a rectangle inside the recording area because that will allow us to select the edges of the screen.

The Recording Rectangle should be editable visually. I think it should be drawn on the screen as long as the "Fixed Region" window is opened. Obviously the rectangle should change when I manually adjust the numbers in the text fields on the window, but I would also like be able to move the edges in the well known way you draw and adjust a graph in MS Powerpoint or other programs.

Also dragging and dropping the rectangle as a whole to the desired region on the screen would be awesome.

If permanent vivibility of the rectangle poses a logical problem I would like to see a button to make it appear and an option to hide it on the rectangle.

The 2 GB max restriction can be neutralized by an option to automatically open a new recording file once the first file is full.

That can be done by just filling the file to 2 GB and then starting a new one, or allowing users to restrict their recodrings to a certain duration and automatically open the new file.

A recording program I have running on my old computer allows me to set the max duration of a video to a certain time (in my case 1 hour) and automatically proceed in a next file after that. I find that extremely useful.

It would make some sense to have the audio input settings in the same window as the video input (region) settings. But audio settings are often more constant and video input settings tend to change more often, So audio settings in the general input settings window to be created and video settings in an easily accessible window (like the Fixed Region screen but with more options) would be good.

A preview screen would diminish the need for the flashing rectangle during recording. If the flashing is necessary I would prefer a more relaxed way of showing it. Maybe a slower flash or a toggle between 2 colors (green and red?) with for instance a 1 second period would make the view much more stable. A slower flash frequency would also better allow us to determine if the recording area is on the right spot.

Audio selection is also a bit sloppy. When I try to select audio frm speakers I get an error "WaveoutGetSelectControl() failed". I wonder if it is possible to actually select speakers as an audio source straight in Windows. I think not. If activated you can select Stero mix, but as an equal option to microphone options. So the structure of these settings may have to be changed.

In fact if that is true the whole idea of choosing between microphone and speakers may have be removed. Instead just the Audio Optons for Microphone form will do in that case.

The Audio Options for Microphone form also has issues. When I try to select an Audio Capture Device, it seems to not do anything. I can select it but when I close the window and reopen it the default device is again selected.

The program seems to only record frm that default device. If I try to select stereo mix as an input device it will just record frm a mic.

I did manage to get the program to record frm stereo mix by setting it as the standard recording device.

I have three minor bugs to report. The first one is already known, but I wanted to mention it again.

First:I downloaded the Sourceforge installer and it failed.I had to submit an exception just to get our proxy to download it since it found potentially unwanted software in the executable.After I was able to download it, I ran it and declined all the extra software. It began downloading CamStudio and got to 99% before hanging. I left it about 5 minutes before checking some logs and killing it.From my logs, I found the URL it was downloading the CamStudio installer from and just downloaded it manually and ran it. I had no issues and it installed properly.

Second:CamStudio is a 32-bit program. I installed it on 64-bit Windows 7. Instead of defaulting to the "C:\Program Files (x86)\" like most 32-bit installers, it went to "C:\Program Files\".I think this could be resolved by checking for the existence of %ProgramFiles(x86)% first and failing back to %ProgramFiles% if the (x86) one does not exist.

Third:When I click on Help > Help from the Recorder menu, I get an error. It is looking for a file called "help.htm". The name of the help file is "help.chm".

That's all I've got.I am thankful this program exists. For the minor things I need to create at work, there is no way I could get approval for that other expensive program.

I'm having an issue in CamStudio 2.7.2 r326 which was not there in 2.7 r316. I tested both versions with several codecs (CamStudio Lossless, XviD, ffdshow) without any difference.

When I pause the recording and wait a little bit and resume then, the video has the duration of the whole length including the paused time. The video itself contains the last frame freezed during the break.

as the changelog shows some sync-fix with r326 for pausing videos, I looks like something happened there. would be glad to have it fixed. Thx!

hi, i was using cs last year to do timelapse screencasts working on after effects, illustrator, maya and photoshop. worked like a charme.now (about 4 weeks ago) i wanted to do the same again but updated camstudio to the latest version before i started.

in 2.7.2 i have input lags or worse in many programs.

(is there anything i could try? eg go back to an older version? where would i find one to dl?)

I'm also seeing a report of an r354. Is that for real? Where is it? Can I get to a version that is certified crapware and malware free? I was able to get to the page from the above link, which was just another forum page, so I'm a bit mystified about the page block.

Appears that you are still using SourceForge. Any chance I could talk you into using GitHub instead? So far, GitHub has not been taken over by crapware vendors. At least, not that I know of...

This one does not have the keyboard shortcut keys bug, though it does not work well for recording Minecraft due to conflicts in the keyboard scanning approaches. This is a straight installer from Sourceforge. The other page block you experienced is due to the installer host no longer being trusted by various anti-virus checkers, which distrust most advertising-supported installers nowadays.

CamStudio is Open Source, but uses some proprietary libraries from MS Visual Studio.

Using CamStudio 2.7.4 on Windows 10 x64. recording video from an area. Video will play back using CamStudio's own player, but when I play back with VLC, the entire video is black. Playing with Windows Media Player sort of works, but image is pixellated and on-screen text is not readable unless it is a large font.